This caveat having been entered, however, we may provisionally accept Prof. Petrie’s system of sequence-dating as giving the best classification of the prehistoric antiquities according to development. So it may fairly be said that, as far as we know, the black and red pottery (“sequence-date 30—“) is the most ancient Neolithic Egyptian ware known; that the buff and red did not begin to be used till about “sequence-date 45;” that bone and ivory carvings were commonest in the earlier period (“sequence-dates 30-50”); that copper was almost unknown till “sequence-date 50,” and so on. The arbitrary numbers used range from 30 to 80, in order to allow for possible earlier and later additions, which may be rendered necessary by the progress of discovery. The numbers are of course as purely arbitrary and relative as those of the different thermometrical systems, but they afford a convenient system of arrangement. The products of the prehistoric Egyptians are, so to speak, distributed on a conventional plan over a scale numbered from 30 to 80, 30 representing the beginning and 80 the close of the term, so far as its close has as yet been ascertained. It is probable that “sequence-date 80” more or less accurately marks the beginning of the dynastic or historical period.
This hypothetically chronological classification is, as has been said, due to Prof. Petrie, and has been adopted by Mr. Randall-Maclver and other students of prehistoric Egypt in their work.[[3]] To Prof. Petrie then is due the credit of systematizing the study of Egyptian prehistoric antiquities; but the further credit of having discovered these antiquities themselves and settled their date belongs not to him but to the distinguished French archæologist, M. J. de Morgan, who was for several years director of the museum at Giza, and is now chief of the French archæological delegation in Persia, which has made of late years so many important discoveries. The proof of the prehistoric date of this class of antiquities was given, not by Prof. Petrie after his excavations at Dendera in 1897-8, but by M. de Morgan in his volume, Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte: l’Âge de la Pierre et les Métaux, published in 1895-6. In this book the true chronological position of the prehistoric antiquities was pointed out, and the existence of an Egyptian Stone Age finally decided. M. de Morgan’s work was based on careful study of the results of excavations carried on for several years by the Egyptian government in various parts of Egypt, in the course of which a large number of cemeteries of the primitive type had been discovered. It was soon evident to M. de Morgan that these primitive graves, with their unusual pottery and flint implements, could be nothing less than the tombs of the prehistoric Egyptians, the Egyptians of the Stone Age.
[3] El Amra and Abydos, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902.
Objects of the prehistoric period had been known to the museums for many years previously, but owing to the uncertainty of their provenance and the absence of knowledge of the existence of the primitive cemeteries, no scientific conclusions had been arrived at with regard to them; and it was not till the publication of M. de Morgan’s book that they were recognized and classified as prehistoric. The necropoles investigated by M. de Morgan and his assistants extended from Kawâmil in the north, about twenty miles north of Abydos, to Edfu in the south. The chief cemeteries between these two points were those of Bât Allam, Saghel el-Baglieh, el-’Amra, Nakâda, Tûkh, and Gebelên. All the burials were of simple type, analogous to those of the Neolithic races in the rest of the world. In a shallow, oval grave, excavated often but a few inches below the surface of the soil, lay the body, cramped up with the knees to the chin, sometimes in a rough box of pottery, more often with only a mat to cover it. Ready to the hand of the dead man were his flint weapons and tools, and the usual red and black, or buff and red, pots lay beside him; originally, no doubt, they had been filled with the funeral meats, to sustain the ghost in the next world. Occasionally a simple copper weapon was found. With the body were also buried slate palettes for grinding the green eye-paint which the Egyptians loved even at this early period. These are often carved to suggest the forms of animals, such as birds, bats, tortoises, goats, etc.; on others are fantastic creatures with two heads. Combs of bone, too, are found, ornamented in a similar way with birds’ or goats’ heads, often double. And most interesting of all are the small bone and ivory figures of men and women which are also found. These usually have little blue beads for eyes, and are of the quaintest and naivest appearance conceivable. Here we have an elderly man with a long pointed beard, there two women with inane smiles upon their countenances, here another woman, of better work this time, with a child slung across her shoulder. This figure, which is in the British Museum, must be very late, as prehistoric Egyptian antiquities go. It is almost as good in style as the early Ist Dynasty objects. Such were the objects which the simple piety of the early Egyptian prompted him to bury with the bodies of his dead, in order that they might find solace and contentment in the other world.
All the prehistoric cemeteries are of this type, with the graves pressed closely together, so that they often impinge upon one another. The nearness of the graves to the surface is due to the exposed positions, at the entrances to wadis, in which the primitive cemeteries are usually found. The result is that they are always swept by the winds, which prevent the desert sand from accumulating over them, and so have preserved the original level of the ground. From their proximity to the surface they are often found disturbed, more often by the agency of jackals than that of man.
Contemporaneously with M. de Morgan’s explorations, Prof. Flinders Petrie and Mr. J. Quibell had, in the winter of 1894-5, excavated in the districts of Tukh and Nakada, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Koptos, a series of extensive cemeteries of the primitive type, from which they obtained a large number of antiquities, published in their volume Nagada and Dallas. The plates giving representations of the antiquities found were of the highest interest, but the scientific value of the letter-press is vitiated by the fact that the true historical position of the antiquities was not perceived by their discoverers, who came to the conclusion that these remains were those of a “New Pace” of Libyan invaders. This race, they supposed, had entered Egypt after the close of the flourishing period of the “Old Kingdom” at the end of the VIth Dynasty, and had occupied part of the Nile valley from that time till the period of the Xth Dynasty.
This conclusion was proved erroneous by M. de Morgan almost as soon as made, and the French archæologist’s identification of the primitive remains as pre-dynastic was at once generally accepted. It was obvious that a hypothesis of the settlement of a stone-using barbaric race in the midst of Egypt at so late a date as the period immediately preceding the XIIth Dynasty, a race which mixed in no way with the native Egyptians themselves, and left no trace of their influence upon the later Egyptians, was one which demanded greater faith than the simple explanation of M. de Morgan.
The error of the British explorers was at once admitted by Mr. Quibell, in his volume on the excavations of 1897 at el-Kab, published in 1898.[[4]] Mr. Quibell at once found full and adequate confirmation of M. de Morgan’s discovery in his diggings at el-Kab. Prof. Petrie admitted the correctness of M. de Morgan’s views in the preface to his volume Diospolis Parva, published three years later in 1901.[[5]] The preface to the first volume of M. de Morgan’s book contained a generous recognition of the method and general accuracy of Prof. Petrie’s excavations, which contrasted favourably, according to M. de Morgan, with the excavations of others, generally carried on without scientific control, and with the sole aim of obtaining antiquities or literary texts.[[6]] That M. de Morgan’s own work was carried out as scientifically and as carefully is evident from the fact that his conclusions as to the chronological position of the prehistoric antiquities have been shown to be correct. To describe M. de Morgan’s discovery as a “happy guess,” as has been done, is therefore beside the mark.
[4] El-Kab. Egyptian Research Account, 1897, p. 11.
[5] Diospolis Parva. Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901, p. 2.